I am on the radio today reading poetry! If you're in Houston you can catch my segment in the 2019 edition of Voices and Verses on Houston Public Media. Click above to listen!
​In this sound portrait, Walrath describes how she fell in love with poetry in high school, her love of the weird and her inspirations. She reads her poem, “Blue Cadillac.”

Blue Cadillac

Oh, the way you sat in
the drive, taking it all up.

I climbed into your cool interior, sliding
across the widest, darkest navy seats
spread beyond me, beyond my vision.
They seemed to expand and dissolve
into a bright light on the driver’s side.

We drove, through endless lanes
of white picket fences, long green,
green lawns, the Texas sun staccato
in the trees, and it may be that I wore
an Easter Sunday dress, all laced in white,
and bows on my tights, or white slumping socks
above black buckle shoes shining with polish.

And in the heat of a Texas summer,
how you could swallow me up
in your blue dusty smell, that
sweet sweet tobacco tucked
into the glove compartment
beside a lady’s silver lighter.
For the sun merely seemed
to enclose you, a line of gold
light above the leather dash.

But the very roundness of you, round seats
and silver knobs and panels like porthole
windows into another time, but mostly
the round, stitched-leather steering wheel
which was surely made for white driving gloves.

And somehow in this memory of you,
your massive lines like some primordial
behemoth long since dead and buried in
ice, the very blueness of you, I may have
remembered myself, another classic beauty.

Here's to You, 2018!

2018 was one wild ride of a year for me. I published my first chapbook. I took many workshops, attended many conferences, and met many new friends. I wrote a lot of things and learned a great deal while writing.

I've been thinking about how the new year is an arbitrary date. We tell ourselves that it's time to rethink what we've done and to plan for the future. But the truth is that writing is always there. It's a well of creativity that you constantly have to refill, rethink, and renegotiate. As arbitrary as it might be, I love the new year. I love the idea that I might be able to make a difference in my future just by the power of positive thinking.

In the words of Ursula K. Le Guin, we need to "see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope.”

I hope your new year is fantastic and full of all the things you love and enjoy. I hope we make it to next year feeling a bit less angry about the world.

That's it! Whew! As per usual, I am supremely grateful to the editors who continue to support my work and think it's worthwhile enough to grace the pages, or cyberspaces, of their publications.

I have one more thing to be grateful for. This December, I decided to finally launch a small press and magazine. Now, there's not much to share right now as the ink is not quite dry yet on this new venture, but I promise to post soon about my plans.

Greg Bem over at Yellow Rabbits has posted a review of Glimmerglass Girl. Thanks Greg for reading my work with such care!

"The chapbook Glimmerglass Girl, while a whorl of selected moments, contains a collective and collective energy that has the potential to awe and influence. It is a feminist work as much as it is a work of an independent, confident poet. There is a general outburst of energy here, one that indicates journey and trial and achievement. It is a landscape of learning and knowledge, wisdom even, attained through the process of living out womanhood. These are poems that, as a collection, field experiential memory and meditative spaces of raw emotion. The book, both narrative and lyrical, lends itself to a harmony of reflection and gracious internalization. The poems are short and brief, and ultimately find their strongest qualities through Holly Lyn Walrath’s overarching voice when the book has been read and the covers finally closed. . . "

This November 17, I'll be reading with Gemini Ink and fellow Finishing Line Press writers at Kaboom Books. I'll read a bit more from Glimmerglass Girl and try not to buy more books. Oh, let's face it, I'll probably buy more books.

Sometimes being a writer can be a little surreal. Yesterday, I went out to the Houston Museum of Natural Science to take pictures with the butterflies, today I get to share with you this Houston Chronicle feature about my writing.

Poems have always been there for me. I've had a whirlwind of personal life stuff lately. Putting out a new chapbook. Moving to a new house. A death in the family. But I can always come back to poems.

Thanks to everyone who has come with me on this journey and to those who've always supported my writing. It's lovely to know all of you. I'm grateful to get to share my words with the world.

"Walrath’s “Glimmerglass Girl” is an intense collection of poetry that speaks out from the first page. Not for the faint of heart, it’s open, but sharp as Walrath doesn’t shy away from letting her readers see the blood, even if she lets it drip across flowers and suburban kitchen countertops.

The female experience is a large part of Walrath’s poetry. Much of the work does match her interest in the speculative. The spirits of nature and the wonder of fairytales are common themes across her verses. However, like fairytales there is something dark and primal underneath the resemblance to children’s literature."

Fellow poet and SFPA member Matt Betts asked me to do a "poetry post-mortem" for his blog! This is basically a behind-the-scenes of one of my poems, how it came to me, what inspired it, and why I wrote it. I chose "Two Hundred Fifty-Seven," a poem from my new chapbook Glimmerglass Girl.

This fall I'm hitting up a few book events in Texas. Here's where you can find me, pick up a copy of Glimmerglass Girl, and say hi!​

​Join Writespace and Spider Road Press as we celebrate the release of Glimmerglass Girl, the debut poetry chapbook written by dedicated Writespace volunteer Holly Lyn Walrath. The collection’s publisher, Finishing Line Press, describes the work as a “unique visual collection of speculative poetry [that] addresses femininity, feminism, and the intersection of womanhood and nature."

To celebrate Glimmerglass Girl, we are inviting women-identifying writers to share their own work alongside Holly at our Women’s Voices Reading and Open Mic. We are excited to hear work that examines all aspects of womanhood, and we especially welcome historically marginalized voices.

I'll be tabling with Bountiful Balcony Books at this year's Texas Book Festival! Come say hi and pick up a signed copy of Glimmerglass Girl or one of the other awesome offerings from the Bountiful table!

I got to share some fun pics of my bookshelves over at The Coil Magazine as part of their #Shelfie series.

​As I'm moving, books have been on my mind because my current shelves are bursting at the seams. I finally convinced my spouse to get me yet another bookshelf for the new house. (We now have 6?) But there's something magical about your whole house feeling like a library. Books are a safe harbor in the storm. Check out my copies of Jane Eyre, The Eyes of the Dragon, and of course, now I get to add my own chapbook Glimmerglass Girl.

I had the pleasure of chatting with fellow Finishing Line Press poet Andrea Blythe about what it means to be a weird writer, how Melville's poems are way better than that whale book, and refusing to cater to genre rules.

Today I have an interview up with Katie Lewington, a UK-based poet and book blogger! Katie and I chatted about my upcoming projects (Spoiler: Space Pirates!), how I balance writing/life (Spoiler: I suck at it.) and what poetry means to me.

"Edward Hirsch, one of my favorite poets, says that “Reading poetry is an adventure in renewal, a creative act, a perpetual beginning, a rebirth of wonder.” He talks about how the poem has to journey a very long way to get to the reader—all the way from inside my weird mind to the page, where I just hope that the right reader will find it . . ."

Save the date! I'm celebrating the launch of my book Glimmerglass Girl in Houston at Writespace on October 19! And, because I love this community of writers, it's also an open mic for other women who want to come read their work. I can't wait to hear all the amazing writers who I know will be in attendance. This is not an event you'll want to miss!

Glimmerglass Girl was reviewed by Stefani Cox and here's what she had to say about it:

"There are meditations on heart and soul, with a tender probing of loneliness underneath. Many of the poems have a mirrored and echoing quality—they seem to come from the borderlands of the psyche, where who we know we are meets the subconscious and mysterious currents below."

Glimmerglass Girl was reviewed at The Coil Magazine. Here's what reviewer Laura McKenzie had to say about it:

"The notion of the “instapoet” is one that looms over the work of any contemporary female poet, and parodies of poems by writers such as Rupi Kaur often have a punchline that frames poetry as nonsense that teenaged girls scrawl in diaries. But Walrath’s collection suggests an intelligence that retaliates through showing the beauty, complexity, and tragedy of modern womanhood — a butterfly that can haul 40 times its own weight seems an apt metaphor for the unifying strength and delicacy of femininity we still struggle with. As visceral and violent as certain moments are, Walrath’s poetic voice is never dwindling. Glimmerglass Girl flitters seamlessly between the abstract and the digital age, undeniably placed in 2018 while feeling timeless. She gives into the “act of self-interrogation” not in her reflection but in her selfies, asking “is this what I look like to him.” Of course, anyone could tell you that no selfie is an accurate portrait, but then, does that stop any of us from trying?"

Today I am featured on the NetGalley Insights blog, where I was interviewed about #GlimmerglassGirl being a top-requested book in poetry. I love getting to share some behind the scenes info on how I market my book for new poets who might be looking for tips and tricks. And of course, I'm blown away by the response to my book and the kindness of reviewers on Goodreads and NetGalley!

"​The language in Glimmerglass Girl is seductive, soft to the touch, yet stabbing. You feel like a knife is twisting in your gut as your read through each poem. Walrath uses the collection to explore her experience as a woman, shedding light on the insecurity, desire, and self-love she has faced. The collection looks at the business of disappearing, of splintering one’s female self, while also showing a woman’s desire to be noticed, to be seen as beautiful. In the poem “In Rejoice of Kindred Grief,” she writes, “for anyone to truly / see her drunken starlight as female beauty / for a body that’s not a four-letter word / for one true kiss.”

While details are still being finalized, my publisher is planning on printing gorgeous hardcover versions of my chapbook, Glimmerglass Girl. If these are available in time, I'll be signing 10 copies for Goodreads readers!

I was interviewed by the kind editors over at Literary Orphans about my new book of speculative poems, Glimmerglass Girl, which is due out in August! Scott Waldyn has been nice enough to publish two of my pieces in the past, In the Dark World, a tiny microfiction about adolescence, and Peony Red, a poem which appears in my book and is about living a childfree existence as a woman.

I've started doing reviews of poetry books, mainly because I wanted to read more contemporary poetry and I, being a writer, need a deadline. Here's one I wrote for a fellow Finishing Line Press writer, Tyler Robert Sheldon, on his new chapbook Consolation Prize.

"Reading Consolation Prize by Tyler Sheldon was a bit like that, waking from a dream in an empty house and not being able to remember what happened exactly, but knowing that something terrible was there in your consciousness and that thing reached out and touched you."

I was interviewed by Charles Christian, editor of Grievous Angels who has been kind enough to publish my work in the past, about Glimmerglass Girl, witches, ghosts, and other weird things! Weird Tales Radio Show is available on iTunes and other podcast apps and also streams as an internet radio webcast on the Paranormal UK Radio Network Thursdays fortnightly.

Glimmerglass Girl was reviewed by Nancy Stohlman of Flash Fiction Retreats. I'll be a member of the flash fiction retreat in Breckenridge this August and I CANNOT wait to join the amazing writers who are in attendance!

"This dichotomy of delicate and strong, girl and woman, power and power distorted comes through beautifully in this debut chapbook of illustrated poems."

Thanks to Nancy Stohlman and Kathy Fish for their continued support of the writing community and for this lovely review.

Glimmerglass Girl was featured on That Bookshelf Bitch, a blog by a lovely writer who is doing the hard work of supporting women writers through reviews! I am beyond honored to be listed among the names of Rupi Kaur and one of my favorite books of 2018, Women of Resistance.

"Holly Lyn Walrath’s Glimmerglass Girl is a delicate yet prevailing portrayal of womanhood in the twenty-first century. With a voracious appetite for the world, Walrath invites the reader to explore and honour femininity in all its glory..."